Converged Infrastructure for Emerging Regions (CIER)
Research summary
Converged Infrastructure for Emerging Regions (CIER) will design and implement the prototype of a self-configuring, cost- and energy effective, multi-radio, wireless backhaul network suitable for providing broadband connectivity to rural areas throughout the world, which are experiencing limited or none connectivity to the internet. Our vision is that communication infrastructure in emerging regions (Africa and parts of Europe) will be based on heterogeneous wireless mesh networks to connect geographically very large areas in an extremely harsh environment.
Description
In our vision, connecting the unconnected in the rural regions of the world requires exceptionally efficient and energy aware and predominantly self managing and low cost wireless backhauls that can utilize heterogeneous link layer technologies of integrated network providers as necessary. In remote parts of Europe and Africa, the lack of energy supply, of wired infrastructure, of trained personnel and the limitation in OPEX and CAPEX impose stringent requirements on the network building blocks that support the communication infrastructure. Consequently, in this promising but untapped market, the CIER project aims at designing and implementing energy-efficient, robust, reliable and affordable wide heterogeneous wireless mesh networks to connect geographically very large areas in a challenged environment. In terms of technical focus, the CIER project develops novel network monitoring and robust message forwarding mechanisms based on self-configuration/self-management techniques deployed in a large multi-radio meshed converged infrastructure to cope with the lack of human resources and wired infrastructure. Furthermore, the design of a cross-layer architecture optimizes power consumption and content delivery. As a part of the CIER project, field trials with end users are used as a proof-of-concept for the developed system. These field trials along with simulations and experiments are further used to validate and evaluate the developed converged infrastructure, assessing the achievable cost reductions and performance enhancements.
More information
Research info
Research title
Converged Infrastructure for Emerging Regions (CIER)
Research timeline
1.4.2011 - 1.8.2014
Keywords
energy-efficiency Open vSwitch OpenFlow SDN testbed WiFi wireless mesh network WLAN
Region
Africa
Countries
Finland, Tanzania, United Republic Of
Institution
VTT
Communications Systems
Espoo, Finland
Head of research
Pertti Raatikainen
Research team
Sami Ruponen, Kimmo Ahola, Elisa Jimeno, Juha Zidbeck.
Partners
Ericsson (Finland), Orange (France), Fraunhofer (Germany), Magister Solutions (Finland), Media Broadcast (Germany), PPO/Elisa (Finland), University Kaiserslautern (Germany), VTT (Finland).
Contact information
Juha Zidbeck
+358.40.5180683
juha.zidbeck@vtt.fi
Open link
Record last updated
17.3.2014